They were two; and a slower-witted third was travelling to his ideas on the subject.  Three men, witnesses of a remarkable incident in connection with a boiling topic of current scandal,—­glaringly illustrative of it, moreover,—­were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if they had been sworn to secresy.  Fleetwood knew it, and he scorned to solicit them; an exaction of their idle vows would be merely the humiliation of himself.  So he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as the ultraconvivial give the last wink of reason to the wine-cup.  Persecuted as he was, nothing remained for him but the nether-sublime of a statuesque desperation.

That was his feeling; and his way of cloaking it under light sallies at Sir Meeson and easy chat with Henrietta made it visible to her, from its being the contrary of what the world might expect a proud young nobleman to exhibit.  She pitied him:  she had done him some wrong.  She read into him, too, as none else could.  Seeing the solitary tortures behind the pleasant social mask, she was drawn to partake of them; and the mask seemed pathetic.  She longed to speak a word in sympathy or relieve her bosom of tears.  Carinthia had sunk herself, was unpardonable, hardly mentionable.  Any of the tales told of her might be credited after this!  The incorrigible cause of humiliation for everybody connected with her pictured, at a word of her name, the crowd pressing and the London world acting audience.  Livia spoke the name when they had reached their house and were alone.  Henrietta responded with the imperceptible shrug which is more eloquent than a cry to tell of the most monstrous of loads.  My lord, it was thought by the ladies, had directed his man to convey her safely to her chosen home, whence she might be expected very soon to be issuing and striking the gong of London again.

CHAPTER XXIV

A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM

Ladies who have the pride of delicate breeding are not more than rather violently hurled back on the fortress it is, when one or other of the gross mishaps of circumstance may subject them to a shock:  and this happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sustained by the within and the without to keep a smooth countenance, however severe their affliction.  Men of heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake them, though earth be shaken.  Dragged into the monstrous grotesque of the scene at the Gardens, Livia and Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any signs that they were stripped for a flagellation.  Only, the fair cousins were unable to perceive a comic element in the scene:  and if the world was for laughing, as their instant apprehension foresaw it, the world was an ignoble beast.  They did not discuss Carinthia’s latest craziness at night, hardly alluded to it while they were in the interjectory state.